When even numbers in the triangle are replaced by dots and odd numbers by gaps, the resulting pattern is a fractal, with intricate repeating patterns on different size scales. These fractal figures may have a practical importance in that they can provide models for materials scientists to help produce new structures with novel properties.
For example, in 1986, researchers created wire gaskets on the micron size scale almost identical to Pascal's triangle, with holes for the odd numbers. The area of their smallest triangle was about 1.38 microns squared, and the scientists investigated many unusual properties of their superconducting gasket in a magnetic field.
Blaise Pascal was the first to write a treatise about the triangle in 1654, although the pattern was discovered by a Persian poet and mathematician Omar Khayyum as far back as A.D. 1100, and even earlier to the mathematicians of India and China.